A webinar to launch this special issue will be held on 24 September 2024, 13:00-14:00 CET.
The year 2024 marks 50 years of the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI). Over these past five decades, EPI has galvanized national and global collaboration, helping to establish and enhance essential infrastructure as well as standardized processes to universalize access to immunization. And yet, inequalities persist in the coverage of immunization globally and across the life course. Evidence has revealed gaps or gradients in childhood and adult immunization within and across countries, and with respect to dimensions of inequality such as sex, gender, socio-economic status, place of residence and more.
Published in the international MDPI journal Vaccines, the 2024 Special Issue on 'Inequality in Immunization' places emphasis on research and review articles that deepen our understanding of immunization inequalities as well as highlight entry points or modalities to reduce them. It follows the 2023 special issue in the same journal that also spotlighted the latest state of the evidence in that year.
The special issue has been a collaborative effort led by Ahmad Reza Hosseinpoor, with Nicole Bergen and Devaki Nambiar of the Department of Data and Analytics (World Health Organization), in collaboration with Carolina Danovaro-Halliday from the Department of Immunization, Vaccines, and Biologicals (World Health Organization), Hope Johnson (Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance), and Ciara Sugerman (US Centres for Disease Control).The webinar will feature video contributions from authors of the Special issue and insights and reflections from editors.